Oswaldo Costa
Oswaldo Costa
Earlier this month we spent a week in southern France and two in northern Portugal accumulating impressions. Four 2013 red Burgundies did good or better; a hypothesis emerged that new wood is deleterious even when it leaves no taste; we visited the only natural-wine-friendly restaurant we could find in Portugal; and we drank home-made vinho verdes (green wines).
At home the night of our late arrival:
2013 Joseph Drouhin Chorey-les-Beaune 13.0%
An emergency purchase. Simple, lacking personality, but has clear pinosity, zero wood flavor, and good weight and balance. Somewhat anonymous, but unpretentiously nice.
Subsequent evening:
NV (L1102) Belluard Domaine Les Perles du Mont Blanc Brut Ayse Savoye 12.5%
Pleasant green apple aroma. Good balance, but the perlage seems a bit rough and the finish on the short side.
2013 Domaine Lejeune Pommard 13.0%
From an unknown producer, recommended by the owner of the expensive but well-stocked wine shop Millésimes in Cagnes-sur-Mer where we bought most of the French wines mentioned here. Beguiling aroma, showing fine pinosity. Delicious, with perfect weight and balance. Only drawback was the light touch of wood on the finish, which should disappear. A producer to be checked.
Lunch in Grasse, at a random restaurant:
2013 Domaine Jaboulet-Vercherre Hautes Côtes de Beaune 12.5%
Unknown producer, but most promising thing on the list. Simple, but tasty, no wood, with perfect weight and balance. Should check out this producer too, for everyday fare.
In the excellent natural wine restaurant Entre 2 Vins in Antibes:
NV R. Pouillon & Fils Brut Réserve Mareuil-sur-Ay 12.0%
42. Lovely aroma, very mineral, with the usual brioche. Quite acidic, citrusy, with thin and delicate perlage. Very enjoyable.
2012 J.F. Ganevat Les Grands Teppes V.V. 13.0%
55. Chardonnay. Very attractive floral aroma, but the mouth is the killer: strikingly beautiful, with ideal balance and heft. No trace of wood, not even that light butteriness that could come from the barrels or the grape. Delicious enough to restore the good name of Chardonnay, long-suffering at the hands of condimentators. While it is not without the body typical of the variety, this was mercifully unamplified by a vanilla megaphone.
At home the following evening:
2014 Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey Bourgogne Blanc 12.5%
Pale yellow, almost white. Nose shows a little butter, from either wood or grape, but is otherwise quite beautiful. Lovely fruit and minerality, with good acidity, finishing just a tad sweet.
2013 Catherine & Dominique Derain Mercurey La Plante Chassay 12.0%
Ecocert. Attractive aroma, clearly carbonic. Balance and weight both good. Finishes with a yeasty flavor, which disturbs, but does not ruin. Otherwise, I was a little irked by its lack of particularity; i.e., it's good carbonic fluid, but seems impossible to tell whether it’s from Mercurey or Mercury.
Dinner at the Michelin one star restaurant Les Terraillers in Biot:
It was gratifying to take my sweet and uninterfering mother-in-law, for the first time in her life, to a starred restaurant so she could undergo the full haute cuisine experience. Luxurious ambiance, high prices, high heels, period furniture, Dali engravings (Jeff would appreciate). Thanks, but definitely not our thing. Tasting menu swung between good and very good, but the only thing decidedly more than the sum of its (modest) parts was a clever bit of redundancy, a pumpkin puree wrapped in a baked pumpkin shell.
2014 Domaine Gauby IGP Côtes Catalanes Calcinaire 12.0%
The wine list had two Calcinaire whites from the same vintage, one was IGP Côtes Catalanes, the other was a Côtes du Roussillon Villages. The somm recommended one as more mineral, but (I think) ended up bringing the other. Aroma somewhat closed, white flowers and almonds. Good minerality. Acidity is quite reasonable for a hot latitude (after all, it’s only 12%), but it ends a tad sweet, possibly an index of heat, even when the grapes are harvested early. But, all in all, very tasty fare.
2005 Mongeard-Mugneret Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru En Orveaux 13.0%
This was the only Burg from before 2009 on the wine list. Leery of 05s, I queried the somm, who assured me that it was open and had no wood flavor. It showed herbs and red flowers, with clear pinosity, good balance and weight. There was a wooden halo still hovering, and ultra-velvety tannins, very present, yet so, so smooooth, generating a sense of LVMH luxury. I wonder if these tannins come from the new timber, since the variety itself is hardly very tannic. Maoist guerilla that I am, I couldn’t escape the feeling that this had a "luxury" profile, one that must generate approving glances of savvy complicity between certain types of wealthy cognoscenti adorned with arm candy. It reminded me of Jacques Prieur’s 2005s, which have always been open, and which I can no longer abide.
The experience with this 2005 Mongeard-Mugneret led me to thinking. To date, I had only been bothered by the taste of wood, but had assumed that natural micro-oxygenation was a good thing. This Vosne made me wonder if it isn’t this exactly this micro-oxygenation that imparts a sycophantic velvetiness to the tannins; tannins that may come from the wood as much or more than from the skins. Then, from the subconscious, up pops a comment from winemaker Luis Pato, trained as a chemical engineer, during a visit several years ago. He said that he didn’t like the flavor imparted by new wood, but nevertheless used 100% new barrels with his Baga wines because new wood tannins 'co-polymerize' with grape tannins to generate a more pleasing tannic sensation. These smooth and present tannins, which I would not expect to find in, say, oak-free Burgundies, may very well be responsible for what I perceive as sycophantic. Of course, I would have to learn a lot more about why producers feel they have to use new wood before I could suggest that wood flavor, micro-oxygenation, and co-polymerization are an axis of evil, a Song of Rolland. For that I have to visit top Burgundian producers and write a new report (assuming I survive).
Back at home the following evening:
2012 Didier Dagueneau Blanc Fumé de Pouilly 12.5%
Typical cat pee and citrus. Excellent balance and weight, but the light pineapple in syrup flavor tastes a tad tropical. Blind, I would have guessed this to be some delicate Kiwi sauvignon, the kind that probably exists.
2013 JF Mugnier NSG Clos de la Maréchale 12.5%
Cherry and underbrush. Serious, but not stolid. Beautiful mouth, with great minerality. Perfect balance and weight. No barrel tannins or wood flavors anywhere in sight. Now, this is my kind of Burgundy.
This Clos de la Maréchale, though young, was everything I’d want from a newborn premier cru, completely without wood flavors or velvety tannins, just beautiful fruit and fine acidity in a 12.5% body. Primary, of course, but with the precise structure of the unaffected. Perhaps one should mistrust the consensus according to which Romanée-Conti, with 100% new wood each and every year, is the apex of Burgundy. Perhaps Romanée-Conti is ne plus ultra fruit drowned in wood to meet the velvety aesthetic requirements of the same people who favor plastic surgery to change what nature hath wrought. Some believe that terroir will trump winemaking after it absorbs the winemaking, so all that wood flavor will disappear, but perhaps not its textural effects. The million dollar question, that would cost zero dollars to ask, is how would the same juice taste after twenty years without makeup? Now that would be the voice of pure and unadulterated terroir, for better or for worse.
Subsequent evening:
2007 Leon Barral Faugères Valinière 14.0%
Had never seen this bottling before. Olives and bacon. Marcia: this is almost a tapenade. Initially unctuous and quite spicy, with harsh tannins (must not have seen enough new wood!). Good acidity, but the whole is not very enticing. Improved significantly with food, especially with fatty things. In the end, one could call it tasty, but a little too robust.
Already in Portugal:
2004 Domaine de Trévallon 13.0%
Olives, tomato paste and herbs (Provencal, of course). Great balance and weight. Medium tannins. Delightfully sappy. Too young, of course, but a beauty. Who knew cabernet sauvignon had finally found in Provence its ideal terroir (outside Napa) and in Syrah its ideal blending grape?
Staying at a quinta (small farm) between Porto and Braga, we drank white and red "green" wines made with grapes from neighboring quintas. No vintage indication, no label, alcohol lower than 10%, in reused bottles. Rustic, but fresh and authentic, redefining in my head not so much the difference between artisanal and industrial but between artisanal and home-made. Among the locals, there is practically a prejudice against regular bottled wine. I was told that many taverns and restaurants have their own supplier of home-made green wine and people frequent this one or that one based on their green wine preferences. Incidentally, red green wine is so dark that it eliminates any idea that there could be any necessary correlation between darkness and alcohol content or concentration. These wines use no preservatives and are fermented with ambient yeast, more out of tradition and economics that ideology.
But first, out of jingoism, we had a green wine from Quinta da Covela, under Brazilian ownership since the 2012 vintage:
2014 Quinta da Covela National Edition Avesso 12.5%
Closed. Good body and acidity, pleasant bitterness on the finish. This National Edition is 100% Avesso, while the National Edition Seleção includes Chardonnay, Viognier and Gewürz; it is therefore more aromatic and slightly opulent, but worth trying.
Lunch at the excellent Toupeirinho seafood restaurant in the Matosinhos district of Porto:
2014 Encosta do Xisto (red) Vinho Verde
We tasted the 2010 in October at this same restaurant, and it was my favorite of the red greens tasted so far. The 2010 was no longer extant, so we had the next available vintage. This was far less evolved, of course, but revealed, with aeration, the same leather notes that made the 2010 rock in a Portuguese cab franc kind of way.
2005 Sidónio de Souza Garrafeira 14.0%
With a Jancis score of 98 stamped on the bottle, this was good, but a bit too mature and elegant, especially compared to the bottlings of the late 90s, of which I’ve had quite a few. The older vintages had less alcohol and seemed more traditionalist, so perhaps this producer has gone the way of Croesus.
Dinner at the excellent Delicatum in Braga:
This restaurant, headed by the attentive Joana Vieira, was recommended by Quinta do Infantado’s João Rosé as being the only one he was aware of that had anything like a natural wine orientation. We enjoyed it very much, so much so that we returned a few days later. Informal, good food, interesting list, where the few Portuguese wines with a natural bent share space with the usual garbage from the Douro and Alentejo, since a Portuguese girl’s still gotta make a living.
NV Aphros Loureiro Reserve Brut 12.0%
I have somewhat curious about this Minho producer of biodynamic wines, since BD wineries are still rare in PT. This sparkling wine is slightly too sweet before food, balanced later. Nice, but nothing much.
2009 Colinas Bairrada Reserva 14.0%
Mostly Baga. Good body and balance, but too velvety. Checking the label, I see that it spent eight months softening in French barriques; eight months too much.
At home, over and over:
2014 Vinho Verde (white) from Mr. Manoel’s Quinta
Loureiro (the second most important vinho verde white grape, after Alvarinho). Attractive flower and mineral aromas, with good acidity and balance. Rustic, but not too much. We asked to buy more.
2014 Vinho Verde (red) from Friend of Mr. Manoel’s Quinta
Made from the Vinhão grape. Looked like octopus ink in the glass. Intensely acidic, with very rustic flavors. Marcia found it too acidic, and generally a bit too much, while I found it interesting enough in a gruff, tough love kind of way, perhaps beguiled by the cultural experience.
Lunch at the restaurant Casa Amarela in Guimarães:
2014 Casa de Sezim Grande Escolha (white) Vinho Verde 11.5%
Loureiro and Arinto, from a local producer. Very aromatic and floral, very good balance and weight. Seems like an ideal everyday vinho verde, with personality, but not too, er, authentic.
Second visit to Delicatum in Braga:
A white and a red from Quinta da Serradinha, made by António Marques da Cruz, a producer imported into the US by Savio Soares.
2014 Quinta da Serradinha Vinho Regional Lisboa (white) 13.0%
Ecocert. 75%/25% Arinto and Fernão Pires. Grapes macerate for 48 hours. This is perhaps the first (and only?) Portuguese orange wine. Typical orange nose of apricots and gunpowder. Mouthwatering, in an lightweight orange way. We dug, and the bottle was soon kaput.
2010 Quinta da Serradinha Vinho Regional Lisboa (red) 12.5%
Ecocert. 35% Baga, 25% Castelão, Touriga Nacional 20%, 15% Alfrocheiro. Herbaceous and leathery. Balanced and wood-free. Reminiscent of cabernet franc, but with a local twist. I quite enjoyed this, Marcia less.
In the TAP lounge at Lisbon airport:
2013 Quinta da Pedreira Reserva Brut Natural Bairrada 12.5%
Lounge expectations are always low, but this was pretty good. Balanced, and tasty, with good perlage. Unfortunately brioche-free, but seems like a good choice for parties, cocktails, etc. The only other available wines, in the lounge and many Portuguese shops and restaurants, were the dry wines of the Douro and Alentejo, the two worst regions of Portugal from the natural point of view. All because they have the most efficient marketing machines, which inundate the world with velvety wines with woody flavors. It’s the free market speaking.
At home the night of our late arrival:
2013 Joseph Drouhin Chorey-les-Beaune 13.0%
An emergency purchase. Simple, lacking personality, but has clear pinosity, zero wood flavor, and good weight and balance. Somewhat anonymous, but unpretentiously nice.
Subsequent evening:
NV (L1102) Belluard Domaine Les Perles du Mont Blanc Brut Ayse Savoye 12.5%
Pleasant green apple aroma. Good balance, but the perlage seems a bit rough and the finish on the short side.
2013 Domaine Lejeune Pommard 13.0%
From an unknown producer, recommended by the owner of the expensive but well-stocked wine shop Millésimes in Cagnes-sur-Mer where we bought most of the French wines mentioned here. Beguiling aroma, showing fine pinosity. Delicious, with perfect weight and balance. Only drawback was the light touch of wood on the finish, which should disappear. A producer to be checked.
Lunch in Grasse, at a random restaurant:
2013 Domaine Jaboulet-Vercherre Hautes Côtes de Beaune 12.5%
Unknown producer, but most promising thing on the list. Simple, but tasty, no wood, with perfect weight and balance. Should check out this producer too, for everyday fare.
In the excellent natural wine restaurant Entre 2 Vins in Antibes:
NV R. Pouillon & Fils Brut Réserve Mareuil-sur-Ay 12.0%
42. Lovely aroma, very mineral, with the usual brioche. Quite acidic, citrusy, with thin and delicate perlage. Very enjoyable.
2012 J.F. Ganevat Les Grands Teppes V.V. 13.0%
55. Chardonnay. Very attractive floral aroma, but the mouth is the killer: strikingly beautiful, with ideal balance and heft. No trace of wood, not even that light butteriness that could come from the barrels or the grape. Delicious enough to restore the good name of Chardonnay, long-suffering at the hands of condimentators. While it is not without the body typical of the variety, this was mercifully unamplified by a vanilla megaphone.
At home the following evening:
2014 Pierre-Yves Colin-Morey Bourgogne Blanc 12.5%
Pale yellow, almost white. Nose shows a little butter, from either wood or grape, but is otherwise quite beautiful. Lovely fruit and minerality, with good acidity, finishing just a tad sweet.
2013 Catherine & Dominique Derain Mercurey La Plante Chassay 12.0%
Ecocert. Attractive aroma, clearly carbonic. Balance and weight both good. Finishes with a yeasty flavor, which disturbs, but does not ruin. Otherwise, I was a little irked by its lack of particularity; i.e., it's good carbonic fluid, but seems impossible to tell whether it’s from Mercurey or Mercury.
Dinner at the Michelin one star restaurant Les Terraillers in Biot:
It was gratifying to take my sweet and uninterfering mother-in-law, for the first time in her life, to a starred restaurant so she could undergo the full haute cuisine experience. Luxurious ambiance, high prices, high heels, period furniture, Dali engravings (Jeff would appreciate). Thanks, but definitely not our thing. Tasting menu swung between good and very good, but the only thing decidedly more than the sum of its (modest) parts was a clever bit of redundancy, a pumpkin puree wrapped in a baked pumpkin shell.
2014 Domaine Gauby IGP Côtes Catalanes Calcinaire 12.0%
The wine list had two Calcinaire whites from the same vintage, one was IGP Côtes Catalanes, the other was a Côtes du Roussillon Villages. The somm recommended one as more mineral, but (I think) ended up bringing the other. Aroma somewhat closed, white flowers and almonds. Good minerality. Acidity is quite reasonable for a hot latitude (after all, it’s only 12%), but it ends a tad sweet, possibly an index of heat, even when the grapes are harvested early. But, all in all, very tasty fare.
2005 Mongeard-Mugneret Vosne-Romanée 1er Cru En Orveaux 13.0%
This was the only Burg from before 2009 on the wine list. Leery of 05s, I queried the somm, who assured me that it was open and had no wood flavor. It showed herbs and red flowers, with clear pinosity, good balance and weight. There was a wooden halo still hovering, and ultra-velvety tannins, very present, yet so, so smooooth, generating a sense of LVMH luxury. I wonder if these tannins come from the new timber, since the variety itself is hardly very tannic. Maoist guerilla that I am, I couldn’t escape the feeling that this had a "luxury" profile, one that must generate approving glances of savvy complicity between certain types of wealthy cognoscenti adorned with arm candy. It reminded me of Jacques Prieur’s 2005s, which have always been open, and which I can no longer abide.
The experience with this 2005 Mongeard-Mugneret led me to thinking. To date, I had only been bothered by the taste of wood, but had assumed that natural micro-oxygenation was a good thing. This Vosne made me wonder if it isn’t this exactly this micro-oxygenation that imparts a sycophantic velvetiness to the tannins; tannins that may come from the wood as much or more than from the skins. Then, from the subconscious, up pops a comment from winemaker Luis Pato, trained as a chemical engineer, during a visit several years ago. He said that he didn’t like the flavor imparted by new wood, but nevertheless used 100% new barrels with his Baga wines because new wood tannins 'co-polymerize' with grape tannins to generate a more pleasing tannic sensation. These smooth and present tannins, which I would not expect to find in, say, oak-free Burgundies, may very well be responsible for what I perceive as sycophantic. Of course, I would have to learn a lot more about why producers feel they have to use new wood before I could suggest that wood flavor, micro-oxygenation, and co-polymerization are an axis of evil, a Song of Rolland. For that I have to visit top Burgundian producers and write a new report (assuming I survive).
Back at home the following evening:
2012 Didier Dagueneau Blanc Fumé de Pouilly 12.5%
Typical cat pee and citrus. Excellent balance and weight, but the light pineapple in syrup flavor tastes a tad tropical. Blind, I would have guessed this to be some delicate Kiwi sauvignon, the kind that probably exists.
2013 JF Mugnier NSG Clos de la Maréchale 12.5%
Cherry and underbrush. Serious, but not stolid. Beautiful mouth, with great minerality. Perfect balance and weight. No barrel tannins or wood flavors anywhere in sight. Now, this is my kind of Burgundy.
This Clos de la Maréchale, though young, was everything I’d want from a newborn premier cru, completely without wood flavors or velvety tannins, just beautiful fruit and fine acidity in a 12.5% body. Primary, of course, but with the precise structure of the unaffected. Perhaps one should mistrust the consensus according to which Romanée-Conti, with 100% new wood each and every year, is the apex of Burgundy. Perhaps Romanée-Conti is ne plus ultra fruit drowned in wood to meet the velvety aesthetic requirements of the same people who favor plastic surgery to change what nature hath wrought. Some believe that terroir will trump winemaking after it absorbs the winemaking, so all that wood flavor will disappear, but perhaps not its textural effects. The million dollar question, that would cost zero dollars to ask, is how would the same juice taste after twenty years without makeup? Now that would be the voice of pure and unadulterated terroir, for better or for worse.
Subsequent evening:
2007 Leon Barral Faugères Valinière 14.0%
Had never seen this bottling before. Olives and bacon. Marcia: this is almost a tapenade. Initially unctuous and quite spicy, with harsh tannins (must not have seen enough new wood!). Good acidity, but the whole is not very enticing. Improved significantly with food, especially with fatty things. In the end, one could call it tasty, but a little too robust.
Already in Portugal:
2004 Domaine de Trévallon 13.0%
Olives, tomato paste and herbs (Provencal, of course). Great balance and weight. Medium tannins. Delightfully sappy. Too young, of course, but a beauty. Who knew cabernet sauvignon had finally found in Provence its ideal terroir (outside Napa) and in Syrah its ideal blending grape?
Staying at a quinta (small farm) between Porto and Braga, we drank white and red "green" wines made with grapes from neighboring quintas. No vintage indication, no label, alcohol lower than 10%, in reused bottles. Rustic, but fresh and authentic, redefining in my head not so much the difference between artisanal and industrial but between artisanal and home-made. Among the locals, there is practically a prejudice against regular bottled wine. I was told that many taverns and restaurants have their own supplier of home-made green wine and people frequent this one or that one based on their green wine preferences. Incidentally, red green wine is so dark that it eliminates any idea that there could be any necessary correlation between darkness and alcohol content or concentration. These wines use no preservatives and are fermented with ambient yeast, more out of tradition and economics that ideology.
But first, out of jingoism, we had a green wine from Quinta da Covela, under Brazilian ownership since the 2012 vintage:
2014 Quinta da Covela National Edition Avesso 12.5%
Closed. Good body and acidity, pleasant bitterness on the finish. This National Edition is 100% Avesso, while the National Edition Seleção includes Chardonnay, Viognier and Gewürz; it is therefore more aromatic and slightly opulent, but worth trying.
Lunch at the excellent Toupeirinho seafood restaurant in the Matosinhos district of Porto:
2014 Encosta do Xisto (red) Vinho Verde
We tasted the 2010 in October at this same restaurant, and it was my favorite of the red greens tasted so far. The 2010 was no longer extant, so we had the next available vintage. This was far less evolved, of course, but revealed, with aeration, the same leather notes that made the 2010 rock in a Portuguese cab franc kind of way.
2005 Sidónio de Souza Garrafeira 14.0%
With a Jancis score of 98 stamped on the bottle, this was good, but a bit too mature and elegant, especially compared to the bottlings of the late 90s, of which I’ve had quite a few. The older vintages had less alcohol and seemed more traditionalist, so perhaps this producer has gone the way of Croesus.
Dinner at the excellent Delicatum in Braga:
This restaurant, headed by the attentive Joana Vieira, was recommended by Quinta do Infantado’s João Rosé as being the only one he was aware of that had anything like a natural wine orientation. We enjoyed it very much, so much so that we returned a few days later. Informal, good food, interesting list, where the few Portuguese wines with a natural bent share space with the usual garbage from the Douro and Alentejo, since a Portuguese girl’s still gotta make a living.
NV Aphros Loureiro Reserve Brut 12.0%
I have somewhat curious about this Minho producer of biodynamic wines, since BD wineries are still rare in PT. This sparkling wine is slightly too sweet before food, balanced later. Nice, but nothing much.
2009 Colinas Bairrada Reserva 14.0%
Mostly Baga. Good body and balance, but too velvety. Checking the label, I see that it spent eight months softening in French barriques; eight months too much.
At home, over and over:
2014 Vinho Verde (white) from Mr. Manoel’s Quinta
Loureiro (the second most important vinho verde white grape, after Alvarinho). Attractive flower and mineral aromas, with good acidity and balance. Rustic, but not too much. We asked to buy more.
2014 Vinho Verde (red) from Friend of Mr. Manoel’s Quinta
Made from the Vinhão grape. Looked like octopus ink in the glass. Intensely acidic, with very rustic flavors. Marcia found it too acidic, and generally a bit too much, while I found it interesting enough in a gruff, tough love kind of way, perhaps beguiled by the cultural experience.
Lunch at the restaurant Casa Amarela in Guimarães:
2014 Casa de Sezim Grande Escolha (white) Vinho Verde 11.5%
Loureiro and Arinto, from a local producer. Very aromatic and floral, very good balance and weight. Seems like an ideal everyday vinho verde, with personality, but not too, er, authentic.
Second visit to Delicatum in Braga:
A white and a red from Quinta da Serradinha, made by António Marques da Cruz, a producer imported into the US by Savio Soares.
2014 Quinta da Serradinha Vinho Regional Lisboa (white) 13.0%
Ecocert. 75%/25% Arinto and Fernão Pires. Grapes macerate for 48 hours. This is perhaps the first (and only?) Portuguese orange wine. Typical orange nose of apricots and gunpowder. Mouthwatering, in an lightweight orange way. We dug, and the bottle was soon kaput.
2010 Quinta da Serradinha Vinho Regional Lisboa (red) 12.5%
Ecocert. 35% Baga, 25% Castelão, Touriga Nacional 20%, 15% Alfrocheiro. Herbaceous and leathery. Balanced and wood-free. Reminiscent of cabernet franc, but with a local twist. I quite enjoyed this, Marcia less.
In the TAP lounge at Lisbon airport:
2013 Quinta da Pedreira Reserva Brut Natural Bairrada 12.5%
Lounge expectations are always low, but this was pretty good. Balanced, and tasty, with good perlage. Unfortunately brioche-free, but seems like a good choice for parties, cocktails, etc. The only other available wines, in the lounge and many Portuguese shops and restaurants, were the dry wines of the Douro and Alentejo, the two worst regions of Portugal from the natural point of view. All because they have the most efficient marketing machines, which inundate the world with velvety wines with woody flavors. It’s the free market speaking.
